


Humidity and Humility

by ElijahDarling



Category: For the People (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Bad Communication, Baseball holds all of life's answers and wisdom, Belligerent Sexual Tension, Divorce, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, Hank is at home all "honey they were in again today and I want to adopt them", Implied Sexual Content, Married Couple, Oral Sex, Podfic Welcome, Protect Hank 2K18, Roger Gunn POV, Sexual Tension, Therapy, Unreliable Narrator, the "secretly married all along" trope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-28
Updated: 2018-07-28
Packaged: 2019-06-17 21:01:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15469959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElijahDarling/pseuds/ElijahDarling
Summary: "Roger had helped Jill move into her new apartment. He remembers splitting a beer with her after the long day, both of them nursing the bottle and a grudge."It is hard when the person you plan on divorcing is also your best friend and professional adversary.





	Humidity and Humility

**Author's Note:**

> When Litra and I were first watching For the People, we assumed that Jill and Roger were already in a relationship or possibly had been in a relationship, so this is a version of canon where that is indeed true.

There comes a point when an actual divorce doesn’t happen because of some vague sense of embarrassment.

 

And it’s not because Jill’s mother never liked him and always referred to him as “that used car salesman of a husband” or because Roger’s brothers keep telling him to man-up and win her back.

 

No, it’s because they know every damn attorney in the city, and there’s something humiliating about not being allowed to simply handle this themselves. They are both just professional enough to know they shouldn’t represent themselves in the divorce, and at some point it becomes simpler to just stay married.

 

Their marriage counselor seems to be under the impression that they continue to stay bound because of lingering affection. Hank likes to conduct their sessions like they are old friends catching up; with humor and a causal air that Roger enjoys, and a sense of familiarity that sets Jill’s teeth on edge. He tells them stories when they both refuse to share or look at each other - about his grandchildren, or his husband, or the fact that he is in the middle of remodeling his basement and came upon a stray mama cat and her litter. He always holds the tiniest of smiles in the corner of his mouth when Jill and Roger inevitably couch all their shares in baseball metaphors. He never asks them why they come back week after week even now that they’ve decided to do everything short of actual paperwork.

 

Roger had helped Jill move into her new apartment. He remembers splitting a beer with her after the long day, both of them nursing the bottle and a grudge. He remembers pulling her feet into his lap when she complained of them aching, as he’d done for nearly ten years of marriage. He remembers how she’d tensed and slipped one foot out of his grip, but left one in. That moment hangs suspended in amber for him - like nothing was more true than her indecisive reluctance. He’d wrapped his hand around the arch (wedding ring a counterpoint to the warmth of his palm) and kissed her ankle. He looked her straight in the eyes the whole time, she hadn’t once looked away.

 

They didn’t talk about any of that with Hank that week. Or the next. Or ever. 

 

He spends three weeks completely rearranging the home they’d shared until she’d left. He repaints it twice. He gets new carpet. He loses his mind briefly and checks into a hotel one block from his office for a few days when he realizes she took all their pillowcases.

 

It takes a particularly exasperating case to snap him out of that. To remind himself that he can’t just exist in a five block radius near work. He can’t be fucking Roger Gunn,  _ Attorney _ all the time. If he can’t be Roger Gunn,  _ Husband _ anymore that’s fine. He can bear it. He _ can _ .

 

He hires an interior designer to come transform his home and can’t find where his damn spatulas are for three days, but it’s worth it when Jill comes over to get something and looks somewhere between hurt and frustrated at how unfamiliar her old home is. She wanders around lost for a half hour before demanding that he just tell her where the damn napkin drawer got to. They have sex on his brand new sofa. It feels like that undermines his efforts to make sure he wipes away any evidence of Jill having lived and at one point loved him here. It also feels good to have her wrapped around him and her nail marks on his arms and spend the rest of the day smelling like her lotion, so.

 

(They find the pillowcases in the napkin drawer and somehow he is more devastated to know that she didn’t actually take them at all and he’s out a couple of thousand dollars over nothing whatsoever.)

 

So they are tourists in each other’s homes. Unable to locate silverware drawers (and he does agree with Jill that the designer put his cutlery in a counter-logical place, but Roger will be damned if he’ll admit that or move his spoons) and experiencing the push-pull of “yes, stay” with a hefty helping of “but don’t make yourself at home”. Their professional relationship, of course, continues as it always has: adversarial within reason, with an understanding that they are neither friends nor enemies. They know exactly where they stand in the courtroom. Anywhere else, the lines get blurry and uncomfortable and ambiguous. It is maddening to sit in the ambiguity. 

 

Roger says as much in a session with Hank. Jill clears her throat, uncrosses and recrosses her legs, which seems to him to be the full body equivalent to rolling her eyes. Their hour is nearly done when she comments, “If you’re that conflicted over it we can stop having sex.”

 

They hadn’t told Hank they were still having sex. The counseling session… goes a bit over time that day.

 

She gives him head in the office’s restroom afterward, which is either a low point or high point in this post-happily married relationship they are in, and he debates which it is while Jill scoops water from the restroom faucet to swish the traces of his orgasm from her mouth. He reels her in and kisses her slowly. Her fingers sink into his hair, she shifts her weight so her hips don’t press into his. They go to a baseball game the next day, and don’t make eye contact once the entire game. Not even when she thanks him for buying them both popcorn. (He gets seperate bags instead of splitting one because he thinks he will literally combust if they so much as accidentally brush hands.)

 

“A therapist isn’t a jury, you know. Or a judge.” She smiles wryly. “Or an executioner, for that matter.” Roger taps his knee, takes a deep breath, says nothing. Jill takes this (accurately) as a signal to elaborate and  _ please _ make her point.

 

“Neither of us are going to win in that room. He’s not going to examine the evidence we bring him and decide our fates if we just argue it well enough. It’s not up to him to decide anything, and he doesn’t care if we spend our sessions looking at what nonsense his cats are up to, or if we actually want to tackle why we’ve lived apart for a year but still refuse to get divorced.” Jill holds up a hand when he opens his mouth - he closes it again.

 

“He  _ knows _ we still love each other. Do you see how he’s laughing at us sneaking around like horny teenagers? We don’t owe him a damn thing, though. We pay him, and we’re allowed to spend our time with him how we want. We love each other, but we can’t live together, and we’re allowed to spend our time with each other how we want.”

 

He remembers suddenly, explosively, why exactly he married her. When he slowly wraps an arm around her shoulders, Jill rests her hand on his; her wedding ring warm from the sun and a counterpoint to the slight chill of her skin.

 

Her mouth is butter and salt. Two weeks later he leaves a razor and toothbrush in her bathroom, and a book he’s reading on her nightstand. She unearths her CDs that he’d packed and stored away in his closet and they slow dance in his kitchen.

 

He moves the silverware back their rightful drawer.

**Author's Note:**

> I Tumblr at https://elijahdarling.tumblr.com/ Come prompt me?


End file.
